Eddie Izzard has put away his heels and make-up - he's in a bloke mode these days. He talks to Nigel Farndale about men in skirts, dating girls and life as the last Labour luvvie

I've interviewed Eddie Izzard before.

It was nine years ago, and he was wearing spiky heels, PVC trousers and eye-shadow. His 5ft 7in frame looked stockier then - in fact, with his big square face, he looked like a giant toddler. Today, he is leaner, more sculpted, wearing a navy-blue suit, open-neck shirt and a goatee.

His full, neatly quiffed hair is no longer dyed blond. He seems more composed, less exuberant - though no less amiable. As he talks, he stares directly at me with pale-blue eyes that have seen the world and wearied a little of it.

I half expected him to be Sir Edward Izzard by now. 'Don't want a knighthood,' he says, raising an eloquent eyebrow. Has he been offered one? 'I don't think so. Don't wanna knighthood. Don't wanna peerage. Like paying taxes. Like Britain. Like Europe. Like people. Like ambition … Gandhi was ambitious.'

I ask because there is a report today about how the going rate for a knighthood is £750,000. And, well, he is a high-profile donor to the Labour party. Indeed, the day of Lord Levy's arrest, earlier this month, coincided with the publication of an advertisement in which prominent people declared their pride in contributing to Labour party funds - and Izzard was the most prominent.

That in itself told a story. Where were all those luvvies, rock stars and captains of industry who had jumped on the New Labour bandwagon in 1997? As the wheels fell off, it seems, so did they. Or rather, they jumped.

Izzard's loyalty is admirable, in a way. The more U-turns Labour makes, the more loyal he seems to become. He has been on Newsnight and Question Time flying the flag. Last autumn, in a double act with Neil Kinnock, he spoke about his vision for a federalist Europe at a fringe meeting of the Labour party conference. A few weeks ago, he accompanied Tony Blair to Brussels to record a podcast for the Downing Street website.

Come to think of it, that must have been the moment when Blair acquired the habit of saying 'thingy'. As in, 'What about this trade thingy?', his inadvertently recorded question to George Bush. 'Thingy' is very much an Eddie Izzard word.

On his podcast, for example, Izzard says to Blair: 'So it's a six-month rotating thingy, and this is the Council of Europe, not the European Council, yes?' Blair: 'No, this is the European Council.'

Izzard: 'And there is a Council of Europe and the European Council and they are different? It's crazy. I mean, why couldn't they call one Steve or something? The European Council and the Council of Steve?'

It's a funny line, but it makes you wonder how a national figurehead, one who is admired and respected abroad, could have allowed himself to take part in such a frivolous and undignified exercise. What was Izzard thinking of? And why is he the last Labour luvvie left standing? Why has he not become as disillusioned as the rest?

'I was never illusioned,' he says. So he wasn't illusioned in 1997 when he went to that famous Downing Street party? 'Never illusioned. Never surprised by human beings. Tony told me that someone had sent him a letter two months after he got in, saying that they were disillusioned. Everyone gets disillusioned with Labour governments. It's traditional.'

But what does he make of all those glaring omissions from the list of New Labour supporters? 'Well it's good. That's democracy. People can choose. I'm cool about that. As Churchill said, as a sitting MP your job is just to support the government. And that's sort of my position. There are plenty of other people rocking the boat at the moment.' He leans forward and knits his fingers together. 'I would prefer a Labour government to a Conservative government any day. That is why I still put money in, to try to help them out.'

It's a dignified answer. And trying to get all Paxman-like on Izzard is like trying to round up bush babies with a cattle prod. You just can't bring yourself to do it. He's too insouciant. Too sympathetic. That is why he has made millions from DVD sales of his stand-up shows.

His fans just can't get enough of him. They go to see him live, then want to chuckle over his rambling, surreal, improvised jokes and stories all over again when they get home. His American tours have earned him millions, too.

He is huge over there, bigger than he is in Britain. He has also made it on Broadway, as well as Hollywood. In his latest film, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, he stars opposite Uma Thurman. I ask to what extent he has embraced the Hollywood life; does he have his own therapist yet? 'No, you're my therapist,' he says. 'Regular appointments every nine years.'

His father worked overseas as an accountant for BP, which was how Eddie came to be born in Yemen, 44 years ago. His mother, a midwife, died of cancer when he was six. He was sent to an English boarding school where he cried up to the age of 11. 'My housemaster would help me along with beatings when he could fit them in.'

When I first met Izzard, he told me he was still grieving about his mother and didn't think he would ever come to terms with her premature death. He also claimed that he knew his transvestism had nothing to do with his mother, that it pre-dated her death. 'I'm a very positive person,' he tells me now. 'I get that from my dad.'

But he does need therapy, doesn't he? 'Actually, I did see a therapist recently to talk about my mum dying, because I've never talked about that properly. Also, I wanted to talk about being a transvestite because I've never really talked that through. At college I went to the doctor and asked if he would arrange for me to see a psychiatrist, but I was never given an appointment.

'So it is unfinished business, yeah. There are some big things I've got to dig up. I want to meet the top expert on transgender and find out what the current thinking is, because I don't think I will agree. They keep talking about gender dysphasia, but that means confusion, and I'm not confused. I know what I am.'

He's wearing a suit and no make-up today; is that because he woke up in a blokey mood this morning? 'I am in boy mode at the moment and have been for two or three years. I think people know I'm a transvestite now, so it is time I locked down the boy side of things. Because I am all boy. I fancy girls. I like gadgets and playing football. Like all straight transvestites, I know my military history. I just have an extra girl bit, which is the heels and skirts and make-up.'

Certainly, he is not effeminate and he doesn't want a sex-change operation. 'If I looked beautiful, like Julian Clary, then maybe I would do it. But the way I look, everyone would know I was a bloke who had had a sex change. Besides, it would confuse things because I like girls.'

There is something that has always puzzled me about transvestites, I say. Why skirts? It is, after all, quite arbitrary historically that women ended up wearing them, not men. In ancient Greece and Rome it was men who wore them. And Scotsman still do.

Why do transvestites talk about needing to wear them almost as a biological imperative? Izzard strokes his whiskers and narrows his eyes. 'I'm not sure. It's like, what would transvestites in caveman times wear? I don't have the answer. I do know that all foetuses start as girls and then some change into boys. And the penis and the clitoris are essentially the same thing. And men have nipples. In fact we have eight nipples, like dogs and pigs. The other six just aren't out there and waving.'

There is also an early stage in gestation when we have scales, I note. 'Really? Never heard that before. And the tailbone. What's that about? And the appendix? That just sits there for 20 years doing nothing, then one day decides to blow up. "What the f--- are you, appendix? The IRA? I thought you were supposed to have been decommissioned." If we had anything else that lay idle for years and then one day decided to blow itself up we wouldn't tolerate it. We would write letters to our MPs.'

Laughter is always just below the surface with Izzard. Just when you think he is taking you, and himself, seriously he will wrong-foot you. When asked what he thinks is the best thing about being a transvestite, he replies: 'Free booze.'

And the worst thing? Well, when we last met he had just been involved in a fight with a gang in Cambridge. He took his assailants to court. Their defence was that he had started it. 'Yeah, right,' Izzard countered. 'Like a bloke puts on make-up and heels and goes out looking for a fight.' Izzard won and the gang were fined.

I ask if there have been any more fights since. 'No, all gangs have backed off. Though I haven't gone looking for fights. I do still get into fights in America, verbal fights. I'm always going to have fights. It's a little bit weird, but the alternative is to live my life ushered from cars to planes to hotels.'

His answer makes you suspect that his transvestism can't just be about skirts and make-up, because that would be too trivial, hardly worth the stress of coming out. He is quite subtle in the way he wears make-up, I suggest, but why are some men so obvious about it? Is it that in applying make-up in a crude way they are trying to be caricatures of femininity?

'They are only bad at it because they haven't a peer group to advise them,' Izzard says. 'They are always dressing like 14-year-old girls going to their first disco. As soon as they leave the house, they hoick up their skirts and put on more make-up.'

As a straight transvestite, has he acquired his look through the advice of girlfriends? 'Yeeeah,' he rolls the word out, fluffing up the vowels. 'And women who walk up to me in the street and say, "Don't wear that with that." When I first came out, I looked a mess. I look like a guy, I'm not girlie, so I have to get this boy-girl military look with the frock coats. That's the look that works for me.'

His relationships, how complicated must they be? 'They can be a bit tricky,' he says. 'You know, "Who is supposed to be the girly here?"' Nevertheless, he has had long-term girlfriends, although he prefers not to talk about them in public.

'They say, "Please just leave me out of this." That seems fair.' But what if a girlfriend says, 'Please publicise our relationship, Eddie'? I mean, Tom Cruise must get that all the time. He laughs. 'Well, I do see that game. But I am more below the radar than Tom Cruise. They wouldn't get a project green-lit by being seen out with me … I don't want to seem cagey with you. I do try to be open about everything else in my life.'

Is he difficult to live with? 'Hmm. Interesting. Probably, yes. I am emotionally compressed like my dad. I think I would benefit from being more of a romantic. More spontaneous. Fly off to Spain and throw all my money down at a casino. I think it's a survival thing.

I concentrate on keeping my career going, on controlling things. I leave my danger for my stand-up.'

So work is a surrogate for love? 'Yes, I tend to keep everything in, like my dad did when my mother died, keep everything going. Maybe I over-think things because I'm constantly planning in a military way how to keep clicking forward.

'It's not luck that makes you a success, it is endless hours working out the best way to do things. I'm hard-working, but I'm also lazy, especially when it comes to writing down ideas for my stand-up routine. I can't be bothered. Let's just say I'm a hard-working lazy bastard.'

When pressed, Izzard admits that he finds it difficult to fall in love. 'I'm very guarded about falling in love. In love, I think, is a real bad f------ thing to be. If there is a God, which there isn't, this "in love" chemical thing he invented was bad. You can't control it. It doesn't obey the conscious brain.'

Is it partly fear of losing the person he loves, like he lost his mother? Pause. 'That's pretty much it, I think. There's also a looks thing. I am more charismatic than good-looking. I know I'm good at comedy. I know I can be in control of that … But the whole chatting-up thing and flirting thing? No good at that.'

But surely when you are famous - and famous for having a loveable comedy persona - all the hard work has already been done? 'Not at all. Then I work against myself. If someone is all misty-eyed about me I think there is no challenge there. They have to put up a fight. They have to be able to argue and be interested in global politics. It's a difficult shortlist. I used not even to start relationships, because I could see they were going to end in a month. I wouldn't even start flirting with them.'

His assistant walks in to tell him it is time for his next appointment. Apropos of nothing, he says he wants to leave me with a final thought. 'The devil has 666 on his forehead, right?' he says. '

But what if you have two kids with 333? If you got them in the same room would that be baaad? Or three kids with 222? Or six with 111?' We shake hands thoughtfully. 'So, see you again in nine years,' he says. 'We could call it Nine Up … Yeeeah. We could do it every nine years until we are on Zimmer frames.'

Eddie Izzard in seven takes

Eddie Izzard has described himself as an 'executive' or 'action' transvestite and as 'a male tomboy', rather than a 'weirdo' transvestite.

John Cleese has called him 'the lost Python'.

Izzard once gave his brother some homemade cufflinks from a Plasticraft set for Christmas, one embedded with a toenail and the other with a tooth. 'This is how sick I could be,' he said.

He supports Crystal Palace football club.

Izzard doesn't write down any of his material. He says: 'It's the oral tradition. Human beings have been doing it for thousands of years.'

During Cannes 2006 Izzard, who is fluent in French and German, acted as a translator for the stars, including Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Beyoncé Knowles and Ethan Hawke.

Izzard and his father sometimes work together in the community centre his grandmother helped set up in Sidley, East Sussex, in 1949.